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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Science Fiction Adventure.

For a limited time, the Kindle eBook of Degranon is available at a special low price, to introduce new readers to my science fiction adventure series, Sons of Taldra. I’m currently writing the second book in the series. Readers can also order Degranon in paperback and hardcover through Barnes & Noble and many other bookstores.

University of Toledo professor Clarence Lindsay has released a new book, Such a Rare Thing: The Art of Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio. According to the synopsis, “This critical study of Sherwood Anderson's most famous and perhaps most widely taught work, Winesburg, Ohio, treats it as a thoroughly modernist novel examining the aesthetic nature of romantic identity.”

Monday, August 03, 2009

The historical West Texas town of Acorn was founded by the Briggs family or the Carsons family, depending on who you ask. Just slide on over to the Turner Street Café and you’ll find some cranky old geezer willing to give you an earful about that. The pictures you see here are of our historical Seventh Street district and of one of the many oak trees planted here during the 1950s by the Fischers, a family of German immigrants that nearabouts bankrupted what little water supply we had back then…but who can argue with the results? You don’t see this many trees in Lubbock!

Worship: Catholic or Presbyterian for some, Baptist for the rest of us.

Wild Life: prairie dogs, squirrels, ground owls, various widows. The horses and cows are mostly *outside* the city limits, but some Acornians like to dress up as cowboys and cowgirls anyway.

Night Life: Three bars, open from 11 AM to 2 AM. A movie house/restaurant. Concerts are no longer encouraged in Acorn, but sometimes happen at the bars. We also don’t encourage the presence of a certain “adult” establishment, which we’ve managed to rezone outside our city limits. We do encourage and support Acorn College Football, day or night games!

Reasons to visit:

(1) German festival!

(2) The best chicken-fried steak and apple pie this side of Throckmorton!

(3) Close to Lubbock and Amarillo!

(4) Antiques shops and an art gallery!

(5) As far as we can figure, no film students have ever turned up missing here.

(6) Acorn College, and more importantly, Acorn College Football!

(7) How 'bout those sunsets?

(8) Unlike the people in Happy, Texas, we wouldn't mind if you made a movie about us, as long as you gave us lots of money.

(9) A short drive to Roswell, New Mexico.

(10) A short drive from Roswell, New Mexico, if you get tired of the alien hunters.

(11) We’re nothing like West Texans in movies or that ***** Greater Tuna play. (The preceding sentence was edited for a word that made me have to put a quarter in the cuss jar.)

(12) We have a more “normal” name than Shallowater, Levelland, Muleshoe, Throckmorton, or Earth, Texas. We love to brag about our beautiful name.

(13) Though he may deny it and tell us to take this off our Web site, rumor has it that a certain famous West Texan who now lives in D.C. attended a frat party or two here. Maybe he just doesn't remember.

(14) None of our citizens have been on that Survivor TV show or American Idol, but we have a daily Wheel of Fortune Viewers Club, over at the Ice Cream Dream, and you don’t know Fear Factor until you’ve been to Acorn’s Cow Palace on Karoake Night.

(15) According to the latest recount, we still have more marriages than divorces.

(16) Trees! We’ve got ‘em!

(17) Acorn Lake! It ain’t big (we had to fight over the right to call it a lake), but it’s pretty!

(17) Have we mentioned the sunsets?

(18) The Dixie Chicks have never written a song about us. No, really, we don’t want them to.